


Dark Whispers

by honeysweetcutie



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Anxiety, F/M, Nightmares, PTSD, THERE IS NO RAPE, non-con, she was kidnapped
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-12
Updated: 2020-06-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:27:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24685342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honeysweetcutie/pseuds/honeysweetcutie
Summary: Kairi went missing, and for some reason, no one thought to look for her. When she's finally found, the horrors she went through while she was gone are impossible to describe. She's not the type of girl to beg, but for a reprieve from the nightmares? She'll get on her knees. [Trigger warnings apply]
Relationships: Kairi/Sora (Kingdom Hearts)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 18





	Dark Whispers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning in advance
> 
> Setting is kind-of canon, kind-of AU. Takes place way after a hypothetical KH-4, after Sora brings Kairi back and Kairi brings him back in return. Things have settled a bit, and the characters basically spend their time on missions for King Mickey and headquarters are Disney Castle and Radiant Gardens. Disregards anything having to do with Xigbar, the black box, or KHX.
> 
> Enjoy!

****

**Dark Whispers**

**Chapter One**

O

Kairi's not the type of girl to beg.

She's the type of girl to wrap her requests in barbed wire. The type to narrow her eyes at a compliment. The type to huff at a kind eye.

The kind of girl who asks impossible questions. She'll pretend she didn't hear yours and drown her answers in misdirection. Kairi's the type of girl to draw her walls up high before she asks you what you think of her, and disappear behind them before she hears your response. She keeps her enemies wrapped safely in her arms.

She's not the type of girl who begs.

When she glares across the cell at the cloaked figure, her ears ringing with the poisonous vitriol he'd spouted not moments ago, she feels her blood boiling. Her Keyblade is heavy in her hand, but her grip is firm. She doesn't know why her Keyblade is coming to her now, after all this time, but its comforting to feel it against her fingers again.

She can taste the metallic blood on her split lip as she wets it with her tongue, and a warm breeze from the man's dark portal plays with the limp strands of crimson hair that graze the tops of her shoulders. Her muscles ache, her breathing comes in short spurts. There's a gash on her right calf that reminds her she's not as strong as she wants to be.

The figure takes a step forward, and fury blooms in her chest like a Spring flower.

"Stay back!" she cries, lifting her arm and pointing the Keyblade directly at his shadowed face. Her arm shakes a bit, and she hopes he can recognize it's from anger and not fear. "I swear if you take another step, I will cut you to ribbons!"

"Why so scared, Princess?" the man's voice purrs out. "I only want to see for myself if you're as useless as you look."

Before she has the time to feel indignant, he flashes forward like a specter.

Kairi feels air rushing past her face and a firm hand against her sternum. All of the oxygen spills out of her mouth in a scream and then she's up against the bars. The figure's hand moves like lightning to her throat. His fingers curve around her neck and his nails dig into her tender flesh.

He lifts her.

Her feet kick. Her eyes twitch. Her chest contracts. The Keyblade clatters against the stone ground after it slips from her fingers.

His hood falls back and she sees a face she can't reconcile with anything familiar. Her captors always wear cloaks and hoods, except for the leader. He always wears a full-body suit of black and red with a helmet that shields his entire face. No matter what they do to her, they _always_ remain cloaked and garbed.

Seeing the face of one of them, so plainly staring up at her, she's shocked at how young he looks. He can't be a day over twenty, only one year older than she.

Her lungs try for air once again, but nothing comes. She begins to see black spots.

"Where's your _Keybearer_?" the man asks, a wicked taunt. Rather, he spits it out like the word is made of acid, and she flinches as if it burns.

Kairi's hands claw at his fingers. She manages a snarl, because that's all she has the air left for.

Something changes in his black eyes. It splits and peels apart, where she sees that he doesn't like the defiance. He lets her go, lets her feet land on the ground, and then he's slapping her. He's hitting her cheek again and again, with the full force of his body, trying to make her fall.

She lifts up her right arm, trying to ward him off. Her left hand stretches out, her heart calling for her fallen Keyblade. It disappears from the ground in a shower of pink and gold lights, and then appears back in her grasp.

_Clang!_

The man is forced back, his own blade materializing within his two-handed grip. The heavy metal slams against the lighter steel of Floral Memories a second time, the resounding _screech_ of blade against blade clawing at her eardrums. She tries to shove him back, but the bars behind her make it too difficult. Brows knitting together with determination and teeth bared with rage, she slams her knee into the middle of his cloak. Her kneecap succeeds and meets flesh, but to her horror, he doesn't crumble.

" _Bitch_ ," is all he hisses.

He flips backward, feet over head. When he lands, his blade is gone and his arms are raised. Before Kairi knows what's happened, she sees his hands streak downward through the air and she feels agony ripping her insides apart.

Bolt after bolt of a powerful Thundaga spell ripple through her body, and she falls to her knees. She can hear herself screaming. Her Keyblade slips out of her sweating hands and her vision has gone white. The pain is exquisite.

The man roars with laughter, cackling like a mad witch.

" _Where's your Keybearer?!"_

"Right here."

Sora is now there, right beside her on the other side of the bars. His cobalt blue eyes are dark; his face twisted with rage.

Oblivion carves a large X into the cell. The bars are like butter compared to the Keyblade, and he lunges through the new opening with murderous intent. The man, Kairi's captor, has no time to summon his blade before Sora's has found its way deep into the center of his chest. He falls backward, his eyes widen in shock. Sora lands atop him with one knee up and one on the ground. Both of his hands grasp the hilt of his blade, holding it in place even as the blood wells up around the tip. He twists it once.

Her captor convulses, and then his head lolls to the side. His eyes are open. He sees nothing.

Dead.

Kairi clutches a hand to her stomach as she doubles over, the fingers of her other hand curling into the stone beneath her. Her screaming has faded into humongous gasps, the pain still coursing through her veins. She feels like she's bleeding from every hole, every pore. Like her body is melting.

But when she looks down, there's nothing. Nothing to tell her what her pain is grounded to. She feels like she's falling.

Sora stands up, leaving Oblivion and the body behind. Kairi hears the patter of his boots echoing loudly in her ears. She feels his hands on her face, smoothing her hair back, and she's in too much agony to notice that he's touching her in a way he never has before. She's sitting back on her haunches, both of her hands gripping her throbbing abdomen. His mouth is moving, but her brain is too overwhelmed to understand it.

She cries out as another wave of scorching-hot pain rips through her muscles, remnants of the Thundaga wreaking havoc on her body.

Sora's hands move to her shoulders, dwarfing them in their frailty. A frantic light dances in his eyes as he calls her name. She pitches forward, still trembling violently, her forehead hitting his collarbone.

She's confused, disoriented. She smells his vanilla cologne. She wants to know where her Keyblade is, but she can't get the desire to form her need into words.

Another pain.

She curves her legs up as close to her chest as possible. His arm wraps around her back and he tucks her hair behind her ear. She can feel his heart slamming against the cavity of his chest.

She's dreamt of this, yearned for this.

_Why did it take him so long to find me?_

Then, it's dark.

* * *

Kairi awakens to Lea's face.

The cool dampness of a cloth presses against her brow. When she tries to speak, she finds her voice is stricken. The pains are phantoms now, chasing along her bloodstream like a faint tingle. Her fingers spasm every few moments.

"It's residual," Lea murmurs, his emerald green eyes focused in on her cerulean ones. He's not the type to be overly sensitive, but she can see his concern etched in lines above his eyebrows. "From the Thundaga spell."

Kairi swallows, her throat as dry as sand, and she closes her eyes for a moment. She tries to remain calm. How is she supposed to explain to him that Thundaga was the least of the pain she'd experienced in the depths of Castle Oblivion? She stays silent. There's no point in trying, because she's reliving the memories behind her eyelids and her body is trembling underneath the comforter.

"You were compromised," Lea says, his tone explanatory. "You had no Defense left, no Mana, nothing. You're starving and dehydrated. A measly Thunder could have taken you out, let alone a Thundaga."

Managing a hum of assent, of understanding, she lays there while he continues to bathe her feverish skin. The silence with him is comfortable, as it always has been.

She remembers their training sessions spent hurling mock insults at one another. Afternoon sunsets spent eating ice cream together on top of the Twilight Town clocktower. Days spent on random missions for King Mickey dancing with White Mushrooms in Wonderland, or helping Jack set up decorations in Halloweentown. She remembers everything from before the men took her, everything before they destroyed her. Somehow, the silence of Lea and his emerald eyes is all she needs to feel calm.

Because she knows if she lets go of that, of those memories, of this moment, she'll fall apart. She knows if she lets herself fall apart, she might not ever come back together. If she lets go of that, of his silence, his hand against her forehead won't be so comforting anymore. He'll become just like them, like her captors, and she'll become afraid.

Afraid of him.

Of everything.

"Where's Sora?" she croaks out, forcing the words past her teeth with a dry rasp.

It hurts like a bruise, and she realizes the squeezing of the man's fingers had hurt her. Her hands rest lightly on top of her stomach, her body feeling as heavy as lead. It feels like she's melting into the mattress of a bedroom that belonged to her millenniums ago. Her bedroom at Disney Castle before they took her.

"He went out looking for the rest of them," Lea says. "He took Roxas with him. The others are off-world, so you got me. That cool?"

Kairi wants to nod, wants to tell him without a doubt that she wants him there, but its hard with the memories starting to trickle back. It's hard because he's a man, and he's bigger than her. And even though she's not the type to beg, she knows that's the only thing that will make her plead.

"Kairi," Lea says, and then she feels the cloth dabbing at her temple where a lone tear has escaped. "You're safe now."

"I'm not," she whispers, her chin trembling as she forces back the emotion. Because she knows they're still out there, the people who took her. She fears Sora won't ever find the rest of them, and she knows they'll come for her again. Her fingers seize and she forces them to curve into fists that quake.

Lea puts the cloth on the bedside table and then stands.

"Want me to bring you some food? Think you can manage soup?" he asks.

Kairi closes her eyes. She can't manage to breathe past her slowly-dawning realization of what she escaped. What Sora saved her from. She doesn't want soup, or food, or water. She wants to drift off into a sea of darkness and drown.

When she doesn't reply, choosing instead to stare up at the ceiling, Lea sighs.

"The King's on his way back to the castle," he says. "When he gets back, he wants to see you. Should I tell him you're not up to it?"

Kairi just nods. She doesn't want to see anyone right now.

"Just rest then, okay, Kai?" he says, his voice low.

Lea reaches a hand for her right when she opens her eyes. Kairi flinches, cowering away from him with widened eyes. He snatches his hand back, rubbing the back of his neck with it. Without another word, he leaves the room, closing the door behind him.

Kairi sleeps like she's on a choppy sea, with fitful bursts of shadows mingling with sporadic lulls. She sees the bars of her cell, the white walls of Castle Oblivion. A set of cold, sunset-colored eyes that remind her of the sky above a flaming, burning forest. She feels hands holding her down on her stomach, hears fabric ripping, tastes dirt against her tongue. She tries to wake from her nightmares, but they keep her snared in thick, inky ichor that stains her psyche black.

 _"Relax, Princess,"_ she hears the voice whisper like the hiss of a snake throughout the caverns of her resting mind. " _We just want to see how strong your Light is when he's not around."_

Kairi remembers fighting. She knows she put up the best fight she had, but she hates herself for not being strong enough to fight harder.

After the memories cut and maim her in flashes all throughout the night, she wakes with a clammy back. Sweat drips across her scalp and under her arms.

She cries - wails, really - and it takes everything she has in her to roll onto her side and bury her face in the pillow so Lea doesn't hear in the next room over.

* * *

Kairi doesn't leave her room, but she does leave her bed.

There's a bathroom joined to her bedroom and she gets up to use it. She doesn't look at herself in the mirror because she's afraid she'll break the glass, so she brushes her teeth over the clawfoot bathtub. She hates that her knees are knocking together and her thigh muscles quiver with weakness. It feels weird to be back home in her room when it doesn't feel like it belongs to her anymore, hates how much she jumps whenever she hears a knight or court ladies walk by in the hallway.

It takes her three hours of sitting on the floor in front of her wardrobe to muster up the courage to change. Her pink dress is nearly brown with grime and it smells like filth and shame. Even though she'd rather see it burned, it feels like the only thing she has left of who she was when they put her in the cell. When she finally does peel it off, her eyes fill with tears and her throat aches at the sight of the rip in the back. She doesn't want to think about how it got there.

She knows she will dream about it that night.

Clean undergarments look too pure for her against the backdrop of her bruised body. They're plain, modest, and white. She thinks she's soiling them just by touching them. She knows she doesn't deserve anything that's in her wardrobe. She almost rips them off and walks back to her bed naked like the whore she feels she is, but she knows the mortification of Lea seeing her body would be worse so she doesn't. She puts on a simple white dress with long sleeves and a knee-length circle skirt that Namine had given her years ago. She shivers.

Walking to the balcony doors, where the curtains have been drawn, Kairi wonders if she should open them. She's scared of seeing a perfect day that reminds her that in the midst of her nightmare, countless perfect days went by for everyone she missed. All she had at Castle Oblivion was grey stone and marble, loneliness and violation.

Kairi leaves the curtains closed and goes to her bed, curling up to stare at the wall.

A knock comes at her door a while later, and Lea pokes his head in. He's got the hood of his sleeveless vest up, and his cheeks are flushed. A water bottle is in one hand and his Gummiphone is in the other. He's smiling, but it's not reaching his eyes. When he sits down on the chair he'd pulled up next to the bed the night before, the smile fades to a worried frown.

"Sorry I didn't come sooner," he says. "I was sparring with Ven. He's visiting for a couple days before he goes on a mission."

Kairi blinks, studying the pattern on the lush carpet. It's so much louder than the barren stone floor of her cell.

"Do you feel like talking about it?" he asks, his voice low. "About what happened?"

Her eyes snap to his. Her voice is a whisper. "No."

He nods and then his smile returns. "Well, then how about _I_ talk? I'll catch you up on everything."

She just stares at him, trying not to feel the way her heart wrenches when she thinks about how long she's been gone.

She listens while he tells her all about the King's new obsession with collecting Orichalcum, and how he sent Namine and Lea out together to get twenty of them. She listens while he tells her how Sora and Riku competed in the Coliseum against each other five times before Riku finally let Sora win one, just so he could feel accomplished. She listens while he tells her how Roxas passed his Mark of Mastery exam in one go, and how Aqua and Ventus are dating now. She listens while he tells her Terra moved to Radiant Gardens to teach swordsman skills to the youth in the area, and how Isa's moved his way up to being King Mickey's personal visier.

Kairi lays silent while he tells her how everything's different, and how the multiverse continues to expand, and how the sun keeps shining, and how the plants keep thriving, and she's sick to her stomach.

Her stomach flips. She realizes something horrible, something awful.

She's sick _._

"Did you guys not realize I was gone?" she asks, and her voice is still raspy. She asks because she knows the answer. The question is wrapped in so much barbed wire that her own fingers are bleeding.

Lea pauses. The flush of his sparring session drains from his face like rushing water. It seems that he's pricked his fingers on the barbs, too. He's gripping the bottle and the phone with white knuckles, and when he opens his mouth to speak, Kairi finds that she doesn't care to hear the answer.

The feeling of betrayal cuts deeper than a blade, and she can't look at him anymore.

She doesn't know if she can look at any of her friends.

"You were . . . You were on a long-term mission, Kai," Lea says, an explanation that offers no solace. "The King sent you to Deep Jungle. You were supposed to be gone for . . . For _weeks_."

"I _was_ gone for weeks," Kairi replies, and she allows the vines of bitterness to twist around every word that she says.

She closes her eyes because she can feel a white-hot anger bubbling up within her that she doesn't know how to handle. She wants to shoot it at her captors, but she can't. She wants to shoot it at Lea, but she can't. She wants to shoot it at all of her friends, but she _can't_. She turns it back in on herself, and her breath catches in her throat from the intensity of it.

"I . . . I know," Lea says, and he puts his elbows on his thighs as he hunches forward. He gazes down at the floor, his eyes lowering in an expression that Kairi can only attribute to guilt.

"Did anyone look for me?" Kairi's voice is wavering with a tornado of ire, sorrow, and desertion. "Did . . . Did Sora _look_ for me?"

"None of us did, until you'd been gone for two weeks without checking in," Lea says, setting his water bottle on the floor. "Sora was at the Coliseum almost the entire time, so the King called him and had him and Riku drop in to Deep Jungle. All they found was your phone, and that was a week ago."

Kairi squeezes her eyes shut. A week. It only took her friends a _week_ to find her, but she'd been gone for _months_. She feels her stomach heave. When she realizes that had they checked on her sooner, she may have been spared multiple nights of torture that she can still feel deep within her bones, she wants to throw up.

So she does.

She rolls over and retches onto the floor, scalding hot bile tearing at her throat as she spews it onto the carpet. Lea's hand is on her upper back, but it doesn't feel comforting. It makes her skin crawl, but she's still vomiting, so she can't shake him off. She's forcing back her tears, refusing to let him see her cry, and she realizes that she doesn't want him to be anywhere near her.

"Get out," she moans. "Just get out."

"Kairi, I'm _sorry._ I -"

"Just _get out_!" she says louder, her eyes blazing bright and blue as they latch onto his. Her voice is thin, reedy, but he recoils as if slapped.

"Okay," he says, sighing. He leaves the room, and it is cold in the absence of the natural flame of his spirit.

Kairi's throat scratches and stings with the burning of the stomach acid, and she finds that it's even harder to breathe than before. She leans down and grabs Lea's discarded water bottle, guzzling the rest of the liquid down as fast as possible. She feels her stomach roil and it all comes out just as quickly, soaking the carpet as it spews from within.

Tears roll down her cheeks. Why did no one check on her earlier? She doesn't understand how Sora forgot about her.

She's tired of being forgotten.

Kairi stares at the ceiling for a long time. At the elaborate paintings that decorate it, at the little cherubs and whispering clouds. She feels like she doesn't deserve to be watched over by angels. After the cloaked men, after their dark spells, their darkness, she doesn't deserve the protection of a Heaven.

Still, she stares at the ceiling and imagines she's lying atop one of the puffy clouds, floating forever.

When Kairi finally bathes, she scrubs the apex of her thighs until it hurts, until particles of her own blood stream up to the surface of the cold water. Her body shivers, her teeth clacking together, but she scrubs for thirty minutes. She scrubs until her arm muscles are too weak to keep moving the loofa, and then she sits in the water until her toes are pruned and her legs are numb.

She sits there past the point of mobility, until she has to crawl out onto the bathroom floor. She feels the pins and needles bouncing up and down throughout her body, curls into a ball on the floor completely nude, and passes out.

Her dreams are nightmares.

Kairi remembers the way the darkness twisted around her arms and held her against the bars. She remembers the feeling of the dark spell worming its way into her throat and down into the core of her body. She remembers the glee in the voice of the one who cast the spell, the one with the black-and-red garb. The way his body clutched at hers with an eagerness she didn't understand. She remembers cursing her Light for being too strong.

" _Break, Princess. Come apart around me and break. The moment your Light shatters, this can all be over."_

His voice was like a demon's.

But Kairi isn't the type to beg. She isn't the type to break, either. She took it all because her heart told her she could, and she didn't break until the moment Sora rescued her. She's broken now, she can tell, and the only solace she has is the fact that she didn't break when her captors wanted her to.

* * *

Kairi wakes.

She can't tell how long its been, but it's dark. There's a wooden plate of food on the bedside table, some dried meat and fresh fruits, but she feels nauseous at the thought of it touching her tongue. She curls in tighter on herself, keeping her hands against her stomach.

The dark magic still writhes through her body. She can feel it in her abdomen, in her chest, in her arms and legs. It's not consuming, it's just there, enough to remind her that she's weak.

The door creaks open at some point, the torchlight from the hallways spilling into the room. Lea pokes his head in.

"The King is back," he says. "He knows you don't want to . . . See anyone right now. But he's calling everyone back from their missions. For a meeting."

Kairi keeps her eyes fixated on the door behind his head. Kairi knows her room smells like vomit. Her bath was for nothing because she reeks, but she's too despaired to care.

"Why?" she says, voice monotone.

"He wants to know what happened, who took you, the details. He wants everyone to know so we can go after the rest of them."

Kairi's chin begins to quaver. She doesn't want to talk about it. She doesn't want them all to know what the men did to her. She doesn't want to tell them how her only hope was the fact that she thought they - her friends - were coming for her. She doesn't want to tell them how many times she kept her tears in, telling herself, " _They're coming. They're coming for me. Sora will be here."_ But they hadn't even looked for her.

He hadn't even looked for her.

She doesn't know how to tell any of her friends that she's going to put her walls back up around her heart to keep them all out.

Lea worries his lower lip between his teeth, his eyes studying her as if trying to to read her mind. "I don't know what . . . What happened to you there, Kai, but . . . The only way we can catch those guys and stop them is if we know more about them. You know?"

"I know," she whispers.

"Everyone will be here soon, in the next few days," Lea says. "Keep resting until then. And eat, please?"

The door creaks closed.

Kairi cries herself back to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

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